Amy Gehrt: GOP’s best candidate’ not good enough

Tuesday

Nov 29, 2011 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2011 at 7:38 AM

The New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper, threw its support behind Gingrich Sunday, despite the fact that fellow GOP hopeful Mitt Romney has a vacation home in the Granite State and has been referred to as a “nearly native son of New Hampshire.”

Amy Gehrt

Months after his presidential campaign looked all but dead, resurgent Republican Newt Gingrich has picked up a key endorsement.

The New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper, threw its support behind Gingrich Sunday, despite the fact that fellow GOP hopeful Mitt Romney has a vacation home in the Granite State and has been referred to as a “nearly native son of New Hampshire.”

Romney has also been atop the polls in New Hampshire, which will hold the first 2012 primary election in the country Jan. 10 — one week after Iowa officially kicks off the election season with its caucus Jan. 3.

The Union Leader’s backing could help Gingrich gain some ground with voters, but even the newspaper itself seems to see the former House speaker as the lesser evil, and the endorsement is as much an indictment of Romney as it is a show of support for Gingrich.

“Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate,” the newspaper said in its front-page editorial. “But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running.”

That, in a nutshell, is exactly the predicament facing the GOP in the upcoming presidential race. Perfection may be unrealistic, but voters should at least be able to feel good about the person for whom they cast their ballot. For the vast majority of Republican voters, that simply does not seem to be the case when it comes to any candidate among the crowded field of contenders.

The problems that have plagued Gingrich’s campaign, and nearly derailed it entirely in June, still persist. He is largely unpopular with the public, and many Americans still remember how the then-Speaker of the House forced a federal government shutdown, then suggested the reason was because President Bill Clinton made him ride in the back of Air Force One.

Gingrich also faced a whopping 84 ethics charges during his term as speaker, and he was reprimanded and fined $300,000 by the House after admitting he had broken the legislative body’s rules by not ensuring the financing for a couple of projects would not violate federal tax law, then lying to the House ethics committee in an effort to get the complaint dismissed.

And, of course, who can forget how Gingrich waged a holier-than-thou family-values attack on Clinton’s sexual misconduct while the Republican congressman was himself guilty of engaging in an extramarital affair — one of a long line of them, it turns out. So much for family values.

This past spring, he attempted to justify his proclivity for cheating by blaming it on his overwhelming patriotism. Unsurprisingly, that argument failed to persuade the public. Oh, and let’s not forget that he also divorced not one but two sick wives — all the while bemoaning how “the Democratic Party has been the active instrument of breaking down traditional marriage.” Hypocrisy, anyone?

The very idea that someone with such serious baggage could even be considered a contender for the Republican nomination shows how far the party has fallen since achieving big wins last November.

But when a candidate like Gingrich is seen as the best the GOP has to offer in 2012, it seems likely the winds of change may once again blow through Washington — carrying the man who ran on a campaign of hope and change four years ago back into the Oval Office for a second term.